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i have decided on reviewing SKRILLEX’s web site as this is my favourite artist at present i have drew up a list and screen grabs of every component his page uses and described its effectiveness i will then put this resaerch into my own page and compare the two to see if i have created a realistic page that can attract fans etc.

1) Logo

This again helps the mental branding when the public see this image they refer to the band/artist. Also creating awareness.

2) Tour Dates

Builds awareness and HYPE giving fans the ability to see their favourite artist etc these concerts are the largest revenue stream and is what makes the artist(s) their money.

3) New Video

Creating a buzz of a new song by using a viral advert and again making the audience take notice or new material and by putting it next to the discography fans are more likely to click on them and become a further fan.

4) Shopping

Additional Revenue Stream, again when fans are wearing their merchandise create awareness and a more physical form of advertising.

5) Contact Us

Allowing contact with the artist(s) reinforces this fictional emotional tie from fan to singer. When this reaches capacity like in the 80’s such as the OSMANS etc an extremely loyal and diverse fan based is achieved along with recognition and success.

I will show you the same features i illustrated from SKRILLEX’s page so mine can be compared to show its realistic authenticity. I have effectively taken in my research and used it on my page inorder to make it appear as a real badn homepage despite it lacking a little details i feel it shows eevrything that is essentail, contact info, my video, gallery etc if i had a greater ability or i worked in a group then our abilities may have had a greater affect upon and gotten me a greater mark.

1) LOGO – ( The logo of nero makes their fans visiting my site synominous with the fact its nero based and the parcour logo immediently alerts followers what my videos about and whats to be expected. My logo features on every page).

2) HUB BAR – ( This allows the visitor to easy see whats avaliable on every page and only requires one click to navigate to this page, Along with the logo above it the same formatted and sized bar is used at the top of every page so confusion is not caused. My HUB bar is a simple grey scaled, circled button feature that requires a single click)

3) TOUR DATES – (Tour dates are needed inorder to entice the visitor to see when their idol is in teh local area and go see the magic live. Tour dates need to be connected to a link feature where they can be bought and reviewed along with the venues site to see seat locations. Also dates need to be illustrated accurately to avoid confusion.)

4) NEW VIDEO – ( My video features clearly and stands alone on the left hand-side of my page so people are entice to click on it, widening my chances of success and exposure to my audience. By placing my video on my site if existing fans enjoy the song they may view the video or new fans may listen to teh discography i have also feature on my site and decide to look at one of the two videos i have put up.)

5) SHOPPING – ( Along with my checkout features when you purchase an item the total adds ups correctly and when clicked on you can change sizes, colours and even what you want printing on a shirt. Along with shipping details this is the most complex feature of my website.)

6) CONTACT US – ( Despite me leaving out TWITTER etc. I feel my contact us pad is suffecient enough to tick that particular box for my component list. I have also incorporated prize competition onto my contact feature inorder to incraese the likelihood of responces. Also to recreate the realism of other pages when they offer VIP passes awarded by purchasing, listening to certain features.)

7) GALLERY – ( My gallery illustrates live performances along with logos and band member head shots inorder to allow the fans to famaliarate themselves with the band, also advertising the excitement and enjoyment of their live performances enticing the site visitors and fans to buy tickets that are on the next page)

My homepage ressembles that of a real page because i have used many a feature of other pages have despite the interactive TWITTER and FACEBOOK feeds as i couldnot work out how to accurately and correctly construct sed links.

EVALUATION

My peers have had plenty a positive comments firstly it works and all the links work. Along with my checkout features when you purchase an item the total adds ups correctly and when clicked on you can change sizes, colours and even what you want printing on a shirt. Along with shipping details this is the most complex feature of my website.

Inorder to research the definitons and opinions of porffessionals in the media world i had to use the internet and websites such as mediamagazine.com and wikkipedia these are reliable sources and check and varified by pros. This evidence is great for me beacsue its reliable and can put all of teh research into my own work. However some evidence i found from several sources proved to contridict such as teh history of the video and dates so i had to cross reference these sites, which lead to me only blogging about what i found on 3 sites atleast before believeing.

Howevr the visual learning of actually watching videos themselves on youtube aisd be greatly beacsue without watching videos from different genres and styles i could grab ideas easily at school from youtube and incorporate them into my reaserch and main work. Resaerching can be done in books and magazines but teh problems i encountered that was their were for teh majoirty were a year old atleast and also take a year atleast to write and publish so they can be outdated for 2-3 years meaning they cannot keep up with teh every chagning world of music videos becasue they adapt every single day and vide released this is why its hard to define them and their conventions.

Unlike teh internet which is updated every day all over teh world conisting of millions of opinions and examples of work that i can view evaluate and blog about to aid my research into:why,how, when etc.

Planning

Involved me finding the ideal location for my piece, i used my phone inorder to get pictures of my local skatepark (my original idea) and the town car park i also looked into town park, pictuers can be easily obtain through my blackberry smart phone. This technology is brilliant for this exercise because it takes 2 second and easily transfered on to my computer and downlaoded on to my blog and locations can be compared instantly.

When i find my location originally the skatepark i can begin to draw up a storyboard an morph it around the enviroment i have pictures, upon its completeion i will have to scan the storyboard on to my computer and annotate that image on my computer this is convenient for my becasue my ideas can be seen widely and has a beter quality than if i took a picture on my phoen then downloaded it.

I felt the best way to research how to construct A2 media videos i went on to www.authurmellowmedia.wordpress.com and viewed past students archive work to see teh standard of work and camera shots that are used and the affects that were popular.

However when i changed me idea i had shots of the car park however when i put them into sony vegas afetr downloading the deluxe version the images where a little dark so i played with the lighting features to see if i could increase the lighting without it looking to faked and airbrushed. Word Documents were teh key featuer i used to write all of my ideas down and refer back to, move lists and a outline of the narrative was written on this programme to keep me going in a given direction. Before construction could begin i had to have permission from NERO record label themselves or when i put my video on to youtube it would be banned for legal reasons. So i went amount using my hotmail account a free emailing service to send a letter to rubrecordings@hotmail.com inorder to acquire permission to use their song however they did not reply however the intent was there and i went on to construct my video.

construction

This is by far the section where only technology has to be used. Firstly the camera itself a toshiba hd capable camera i filmed my final piece on had far better quality pixels than my orginal camera which received many a complaint. Once filmed i had to use a scart lead to transfer it on to my computer however most of the school camera be default match a format that the school computer allow immedient download.

So i had to render each file seperately on to www.online-convert.com which is a fast free website that reformats any file into any other, without this website my video would of have to been done at home and my peers and teacher would not be able to witness it until i burnt it beacsue of resources that was inpractical incase it had flaws. Sony vegas was everyone choice of editing software because i picked teh slow computer i had to download the new deluxe version in order to gain access to newee features such as slow mo features i knew i would require. Without this version my lighitng would be dark and colour correction would be poor. Colour correction helped me brighten up scenes inside the car park that were filmed in dimmly lit areas on lower down levels. This correction is done by clicking of teh flash light tool and clicking the background adn dragging the above scroll bar: extreme left resulting in a heaven glow and right meaning pitch black i choosen 0.4 which made it consistent with the rest of my video allwoign easy vieweing and continuity.

Even animation tools came in handy becasue i tagged my video at teh start and end stating the title and composer, again a key convention which could only be achieved by technology. Text is added by using the A tool and you type in what text you want to appear and drag the dialogue box into the desired position on the screena dn duration you want i went for 3 seconds, i decided upon on just having it ariel on to the page, meaning a straight foward appear and disappear.These are all example of post production where effects can be added as much as you want, despite my video being quite plain compared to others in my class i had tinkered with filters and slow mo’s these are great uses of technology beacseu it give an enhanced viewing pleasure for the audience.

Evaluation

Inorder to evaluate my early work i used audience feedback using my video camera which i recorded peopel evaluating my work which i uploaded onto my youtube account. Which i then uploaded onto my blog. The results i then put into graphs and pie charts which i constructed in WORD using the INSERT TABLE tool and then i had to input them into PAINT and crop the image and save as a JPEG in my MEDIA PICS FILE. However the best charts i made were the pie charts EXCEL that specialise in graphs and data analysis i am familiar with this programme in business so contrsucting the charts were easy i made it crystal clear for me and other on my blog to see what others felt i needed to do to increase the quality of my work. Without technology onyl words could describe what was needed to do and too much writing can make my blog look cluttered.

Overall technology is the best tool for this course and research is useless without because book data is old and rarely updated.

Sony Vegas was greatly more effective than MOVIEMAKER which is a basic and childish version of SV howeevr due to the school not recognising certain default files it took time to convert files and file sizes proved to be a problem when over 20 seconds of footage are on them. Causing it to crash constantly and the fact teh whole room was filled with people using teh same programme at teh same time proved the programme to repeatedly stool

Inorder to self evaluate on my work i went on to the INTRANET my schools version on their safe internet where my peers had drawn up their own blog checklist which i read and ticked off to see if my work was up to scratch. Also

Audience feedback is key to listen to beasceu if your audience dont liek what they see and you ignore them when you relases that piece then the result will remain and then the video will flop and fans will hate it and subconcousily when you dislkiek teh video you dislike the song and artist.

My target audince was tragetted to everyone in school beacsue music viedos dont have a tyraget audince just anyone who enjoys that artist for example a 50 year old may liek EMINEM so a target audience is hard to define its the artist themselves that targeted. JUSTIN BIEBER videos would onyl interest younger feamle audiences as where anyone listens xfactors cadidates artists. However as published on my blog my first draft of my video and a bullet pointed my peers reviews and corrections and listed how i would react to these, it took this contsructive criticism well beacsue at the end of teh day we are all in a ploite compettion with each other and trying to help the year group produce the best ever work so by helping each other make our videos as best as can be helps us as a year group.

The major flaws in my work were the technical aspects as i lack in this area becasue of TOM did the majoity of the editing and affects on our short film. This feedback was condoning my wobbley camera and lack of continuity becasue i filmed across 2 days and 2 diferent lighitn levels meaning it did look ‘poor’. So i did take these on board and refilmed usign a tripod and refilmed with a new camera over one days to keep the aspects all the same. As recgonised by my teacher, myself and peers in my remake a week later due to their input i could make my video better tenfold without the feedback i would of handed that edit in adn received bad ffedback with no time to edit.

Also i had previously filmed my audinces feedback for my new video just before my final edit and they generally said alot better how some shts needed shortening and just random afefcts needed adding so i went away and doen these changes and my final edit is what it is becasue of audience feedback.

One of the best reviwes i had that other had recived that was the narrative was extreemyl clear and simple its a chase and a fight atteh end then LUIS jumps down and disappears, unlike some of the very complexed naartives and confusign seqeunces such as other groups in my class. The underlining feature was a mystery deal and a protagonist adn a antagonist however some groups had used too many affects and were missing chunks of the video and i could not understand the concept of their video becasue it was just to conjunctional.

Once the music video was finished i set about completing the 2 other ancillary texts: the digi pack and the web page. These are sub-promotional tools used to reach out to the wider population. The replica web page i created for NERO includes links to social netwrokign such as twitter and facebook to get my video to a wider audience. My digi pack was also construted to stand out amongst others in my class and differentiat mine form everybody elses.

I had to link these 3 which was a very difficult but I managed to find not a single image but a concept of parcouring the free running image that appears everywhere through my work. The parcour logo and white sillouette on a black background that features in my digi pack and worn on clothing in my video along with the logo being on my web home page. That way when someone sees my video etc they recognise it from my other works.

My Digipack ancillary text, I create a concept and theme of mid air skills, this included modernism of teh sport and the urbanise feeling on the front cover of my cd cover to hint at the urbanisation of the sport and my video. The contrast from fornt to back the idea of black and white backed against colour shows theres two sides to this digi pack as is this video where my protag and antagonists fight it out. However due to this being a last second change the narrative is not reflected in my digi pack.

Becasue of the hand drawn image i decided to not put the title of the song on the front cover becasue i feel teh public will appreciate the drawing and pick it up in interest and when looking on the back the recognisable songs of NERO become apparent. The inside of my digi pack is also black on white for the contrast on dark adn light, good and evil such as the chase in my video.

The website design reflects these ideas with the use of specifically chosen pictures, layout and fonts. One connection between the products is instantly visible on the pages with pictures of my GALLERY which include the parcour logo and digi pack design images on the slide show feature. I again decided to use a darker background becasue i feel it drags the attention of the viewer into the images in the centre of teh page such as my video and other features etc.

I have already use the branding used by NERO using their name and logo so peopel visiting my site can recognise what its all about immediently. This is a great feature and a oppurtunity which many producer take advantage of when advertising becasue people recognise teh name and logos and are asscoiated which future products and merchandise.

Using this commodification as an opportunity, my group has placed the parcour, cd cover and nero logos on all of the buyable created products on my shopping list so i can gain more reognisition from the viewing public. Howver a trick i missed out on was putting the web page on my digi pack becasue i contructed teh cd cover before the wix page i couldnot go back and do this. So if re-done this is a correctin i would rectify, this would be a great connection.

Another imagery based connection is on my gallery section of my web page has picture on a slideshoe feature that included my digi pack covers and LUIS my runner. The video itself also takes pride on my master home page a perfect link along with NERO’s other feature songs and new releases on my discography page creating the link between my and their works, increasign the awarness of our work. Going viral with all of those feature allows me to target billions of peopel due to any who has access to the internet can see my work.

Cross media convergence is when differnt formats cross in one, such as you can in theory buy merchandise and music off of my web page and a direct link between NERO’s new video to www.thisisnero.com also links between me and social networking. Just the fact you can watch videos and listen to music for free another form and cross convergence. By having twitter the audience or followers themselves on twitter and facebook can become extensions of promotional tools, when they like your page or tweet in reference to you then people reading that are just one click away from your website, hugely increasign awarness. With all of this loose advertising its a great form of synergy, not forgetting the contact us form which also features just reinforces the synergy.

I had decided upon using the NERO single Guilt for my music video coursework because i could see the potential in its pace and theme to lay it on to a free running montage chase. However to say that I followed the typical conventions of a music video is hard to deteremine becasue of the loosely used term conventions modern day music videos are as abstract and disjunctional as possible. Videos can conisist of the singer live performing to them turning in cars and transporting to beside an ocean, so due to these transformations in this media industry i cannot officially say i stuck to any set conventions.

However the main feature of 99% of music videos are that the artist mimes the lyrics to make the whole thing seem realistic and more appealing to the audience however in my video i felt it would be out of place if my runners all of a sudden stopped and strated singign so i have challenged this convention of media to get the same desired affect of realism however done teh complete oppoasite of what many artists have done. The beginning and endign of my video i have tagged the title of teh song on to mine becasue anybody watching music videos on the variety of channels like to know ‘0w who sings this’ and then they listen to other songs from that artist and so on and creating a domino affect and creates awarness. This convention I felt was key to use the that excat reason so straight away peopel have an idea of what is expected.

Also at the start of my video a little narartive is played for 12 seconds to set up the narrative, just a standing shot of me and luis illustrating a mystery deal with a rucksack showing that this is why teh chase is happening beacsue my video is a strongly nasrative based piece of work all of my shots are significant unlike random montage editing used by many directors to break up the main feature BEP use this technique alot to make the video more interesting using large images of bright excotic animals and strobe lighing to give a ‘cool’ feel to the video. This is a direct example of JOHN FISKE” music videos foreground teh signifier over teh signified. I have challenged this convention because i feel in the chase everything is key, building suspence is my major aim and breakign it up with empty shots of scenery would lose my wanted affect and bore the audience.

The reasons for these quick edits is to keep teh storyline up with the pace of the beat keep teh smooth transition bewteen shots, like my video uses fast edits when possible to prevent teudim when going through doors and capture teh diificulty and aww of the flips and jumps etc. Slow-mo was always going to be a major feature in my video to encapture the a brillaint skilled move on the corkscrew flip howver i felt that is over used its effectiveness would be dulled so i only use teh affect once. My video does not rely heavilt at all on post-porducution affects such as KATY PERRY- FIREWORKS however this ocnvention i was forced to challenge beacsue of my lack of techniacl know how to use green screens and other such affects that my peers were using. Unlike every other artist that has a record label i do not possess the financial backign adn newer software to use post-porudtcion affects to tehri fullest..Uisng these conventions of fast editing and added affects such as slow-mo is key in any video to allow it to reach its full potential of gettign teh audiences attention and respct.

In my editing process i just had the chase lined ou tin order on my vegas and layed teh music on top of it, unlike other conventional directors who break up the song into verse-choruse-verse etc and play the narartive around this and use reapeatcbaility in the choruese to get a sense of familiarity across to the viewer, beacsue of my video being stronly narrative based and the underlinign featyrue of a chase i could not use reapeatability convention so challengin this is not the best idea as its the most used and important feature of a video from day one. So if done again i would incorporate this tool.

Digi packs

My digi pack was created by my own images used through a vigorouse process or sketching, roughing adn peers reviweing just like real digi packs when templates are drwan up and the artists has hundreds of photos taken then ideas are pitched fowarsd to everyone involved. This ocnvention of porudtcion is key beacsue if just 4 ok images are used you run the risk of making an uanppealign cd cover and it wont be picked off the shelves. The main convention of a cd cover is rather a band logo such as BLINK 182 or portratit picture of CHERYL COLE however i used a hand drwan picture of my back cover, teh back cover of luis backflippin over a hay bail near his house which he then drew in a more urban setting to help this course. The back page of my digi pack i decided upon an album feel and listed 6 songs on the back and barcoded the bottom to tie into teh mise-en-scene of a real album case, even down to the legal oblgiataion and corpyrighting laws listed in small print at teh botom under teh barcode, following this convebntion is key beacsue if i had not use a barcode or any text what so ever then its not realstic and defeats the whole objective of teh task.

Web page

My web pages conisists of 6 pages including a badn homepage, gallery, merchandising with a working basket feature and checkout component so when you see a product you like you can hover over the image so it enlarges and the price appears dependign on your location and even the song has a link to itunes from which you can buy it aswell. This is an additonal revenue stream for teh band and record label to is mainly to cover teh cost of teh domain name and maintance costs not a long term form of fundign.

Liek every single artists’ website for example i reasrhced SKRILLEX AND NERO at the bottom of each page espacially th econtact us page which i alos have has the 3 follwoign buttons: twitter, facebook and favourite buttons i have installed a fake twitter feed onto my page so people can contact me and a facebook link linkign straight to NERO’S official page. These conventions are the major component on web pages so fans can get in contact with ‘them’ and creates a more pesronal bond bewteen them, when thye can see what their favoutire starts are tweeting about at any given time. This fiction and emotional tie is what make them go out adn listen to their music.

The actaul music and video must be teh centre of attention on any web page my video and nero’s new release is the first page of my page just as it is on nero’s one their new song is surrounded by commet pages and feedback. The fact its the firts thing you see makes you click on it i hope followungn this convention also helps me acheiev this aswell. All of neros songs feature on my discography page where anyone can just click on the ipod tool button adn begin listening to one of many tracks i have uploaded. This convention is very uselful not for me but the artist(S) becasue it gets fans who may haev just started listenign to their music and get them interested in their other tracks.